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Monthly Archives: August 2007

An out of touch Congress

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

This post ( Why is the Democratic Congress so unpopular?) by Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head: For the past several months, Congress’ approval ratings have been as low as, and often lower than, George Bush’s unprecedentedly low ratings. Various media pundits and right-wing advocates use this fact constantly to insinuate that Bush […]

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Why Democrats are so pathetic

Monday, August 20, 2007

A couple of articles today, one from the Seminal (mostly quoting Jonathan Alter) and one from Firedoglake, set me to thinking about a critical difference between Democrats and Republicans. Oddly enough, the contrast illustrates how each party is deficient, in contrasting ways. Alter discusses the cave in by the Democrats on the FISA bill, and […]

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No more Friedman Units?

Sunday, August 19, 2007

More than a year ago Atrios coined the term Friedman Unit, which refers to the successive 6 month periods that Tom Friedman announced we should wait before declaring the war in Iraq a failure. it appears from today’s very silly column that Tom might be covertly declaring that he has, for himself, decided that the […]

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Deja vu all over again

Saturday, August 18, 2007

While wandering through the blogosphere I came across this post at Down with Tyranny in which Howie Klein discusses the recent spate of official factfinding visits to Iraq, during which the visitor is squired around the green zone and fed a line of bull by the military. These folks, most of them already war supporters, […]

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No good deed goes unpunished

Friday, August 17, 2007

This was the last day of my vacation, and I celebrated in fine fashion. Often, when I am out bike riding, I come upon a turtle crossing the road, and I alway stop and carry it to the other side, so as to avoid squashed turtle. I have always done this without mishap, but those […]

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The limits of term limits

Thursday, August 16, 2007

In what can only be considered a precursor to an attempt to establish a Castro like dictatorship, Hugo Chavez is moving toward amending Venezuela’s Constitution to remove a term limit restriction which present prevents him from serving as President for life. It appears that the chances are good that he’ll get what he wants. No […]

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Were Number 42!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

In a recent post I passed on the view of the Economist that the United States was ranked number 17 in the standings of Democratic countries. Given the number of countries in the world, that still gave us a chance to make the playoffs, but it is still somewhat dispiriting to know you’re trailing Malta […]

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Insuring the rich stay rich

Monday, August 13, 2007

Must reading by Dean Baker at Truthout (Welfare as We Know It Now): In the days before welfare reform, single mothers could collect five or six hundred dollars a month without working. That was what welfare looked like before 1996. In the Internet Age, welfare is about having the government do everything it can to […]

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Nice work if you can get it

Monday, August 13, 2007

I don’t know the precise hole into which Karl Rove will now crawl, but one candidate, at least as a sideline, is the scam in which Linda Chavez, Reagan’s (and Bush’s proposed) Hispanic conservative is currently engaged. According to the Washington Post, she and her equally loathsome husband run three PACs, which have soaked over […]

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Losing in Afghanistan

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Interesting article in the Times this morning about the failure in Afghanistan (you expected something else from these folks?). It contains the usual litany of failures, incompetence and faith based governance. Nothing new there. I found two things interesting. One was the fact that almost all of the sources were on the record. Apparently the […]

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